


how light carries on endlessly

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Series: i wish we had more time (ws!steve trevor) [9]
Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Vignettes, Winter Soldier AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-15 06:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12315696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: —even after death.a series of very short ficlets set within the WS!Steve AU. updated sporadically.





	1. you must first belong nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> fic title is from Sleeping At Last's "Saturn".

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _One with the environment. One of the most valuable skills in espionage. You can gear up with the best swag out there—put on camo, tech, weaponry...but it is the unteachable skill to belong anywhere._
> 
> _The other side of that is the unfortunate truth:_
> 
> _You must first belong nowhere._
> 
>  
> 
> — Natasha Romanov, _Black Widow_ #3, Nathan Edmondson/Phil Noto

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> takes place pre-series. chronologically, post-Justice League.

There’s a certain trick to being a spy.

Not necessarily a good spy, but one that’s still alive. (Which automatically qualifies someone as a good spy, he supposes, considering how many of them die, foam between their lips or a bullet in their head.)

Anyway—there’s a trick, a knack, that all living spies learn on the job. See, often, what keeps them alive isn’t the best gun, or the fastest poison, or the latest information. What keeps them alive is the skill of blending in anywhere, fading into the background, as if they belong there.

He’s good at that. He is fucking amazing at that, and only some of it is because of whatever bullshit Maru and her successors shoved into his head and his body without his consent—the rest of it is all him. He’s naturally talented at blending into a lot of places, or at least making himself seem forgettable, just a guy in the background.

But the other side of this skill, of this talent?

He doesn’t belong anywhere. Not in truth. Not in a small sleepy town in Germany, not in a rundown apartment on the outskirts of Madrid, not in a safehouse somewhere between Belgium and Denmark.

Luthor would say otherwise, perhaps, insist that he’s property of LexCorp and thus legally belongs to the company, but considering Luthor is currently in jail, again, he kinda doubts the guy would know what’s legal or what’s not. Or would even _care_ , considering what Luthor has been willing to do in the past.

The point is—he doesn’t belong there, either. He has a feeling that if he ever did belong anywhere, it’s long gone by now.  
Except—

Sometimes when he dreams, he dreams of her—the woman in armor, like an avenging angel, striding across a battlefield. Shouting at a general, about honor and what generals should do. Burning, with a righteous anger.

Smiling at him, bright-eyed and hopeful. Eating ice cream, exhaling in wonder at the beauty of it all, under the smoke and grime and dirt.

Her face in the firelight, dark eyes inviting. Her fingers brushing over his cheek. Her hair in his fingers, her arms around him, like he belongs there. Like he should be there.

He’s alone when he wakes from his dreams, always. Alone, and cold, like someone leeched all the warmth from his body and left him to bleed in the snow. He curls up under his threadbare blanket, tries to take hold of the details, of the curve of her mouth and the feel of her hair and the faith in her eyes, but they slip from his fingers like so much sand, until he’s left with only a vague memory of warmth.

And this, always this: her eyes looking at him across the battlefield, her voice shaking.

( _Steve?_ )

He belonged somewhere. Once. With her, he thinks.

He doesn’t, anymore.

It hurts more than it should, to know that. He’s a spy, and one that’s still alive at that. He doesn’t belong anywhere, anymore, and with her least of all. Everyone's better off this way, her most of all.

The thought is a knife, anyway, twisting in his heart despite what he keeps telling himself.

He shuts his eyes, and tries not to dream about her. About a home he almost had.


	2. here comes the first day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Stars' "In Our Bedroom After The War".
> 
> takes place uh. hm. sometime after "take these walls, these wars".

“Um,” says Steve, poking his head into the kitchen.

Diana lets out a long, tired sigh, from her perch on the table. “I’m going to have to buy a new one,” she says, staring at the remains of their toaster oven.

“You don’t have to,” he says, stepping inside, rubbing at his eyes. She’s a little sorry he had to wake up so early, on their day off from the Louvre, because of this mess. “I mean. This can be fixed, right?” He gestures to the toaster oven, hope in his eyes.

Diana looks at him a moment, basking in the sight of him, sleepy and bathed in the light streaming in through the window and so, so _alive_ , his eyes bright and blue. She never thought she would see those eyes again, and despite the circumstances of how she did see them again, she's still glad for the chance.

Then she says, “Unless you suddenly know how to fix a toaster oven, I doubt it.”

Steve sighs, running a hand through his hair and keeping his distance from the oven. “Yeah, point,” he says. “I can hotwire a car but this? Is beyond me.”

“If it helps, I don’t think my regular mechanic could rescue it either,” Diana says.

“What about Cyborg?” says Steve. “He’s your teammate, he knows how to repair stuff. Or—that’s what the intel told me, anyway.”

Diana shakes her head. “Victor _is_ my regular mechanic,” she says. “And this is beyond even his abilities, unless you want a possibly-sentient toaster oven.” She’s only semi-joking about this, she's seen how the coffeemaker at Bruce's manor seems to prefer Victor to literally everyone else now.

Steve shakes his head, horror dawning in his eyes at the very thought of a sentient toaster oven. “God, no,” he says. “I watched Terminator last week, and that is not a future I want to go through ever.”

“Then we’re in agreement,” says Diana, unable to stop herself from grinning at him. “On the other hand, we do need to make breakfast, and we have time to start. How do you feel about omelettes?”

“Omelettes are pretty good,” says Steve, brightening. “Also, Claire showed me how to make Cuban coffee, so if you want—”

“Steve,” says Diana, stepping closer, fingers brushing against his, “of course I do.”


	3. the warriors that built this town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In retrospect, Steve’s pretty sure he should’ve seen this coming._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Imagine Dragons' "Warriors". for day 3 of Wondertrev Drabblethon, "breakfast gone wrong".

"Down!"

In retrospect, Steve’s pretty sure he should’ve seen this coming. Lois had warned him about this happening, dammit, about the inevitability of finding himself caught up in something that should, rightfully, involve full armor and a heavy arsenal instead of his favorite shirt and a pair of yoga pants.

He hits the ground, pushes the table over to improvise for cover. Their plates clatter to the ground, spilling bacon and eggs and sandwiches. He mourns the loss, briefly, before he has to duck behind cover.

Diana joins him a minute later, looking none the worse for wear for someone breaking a chair over a guy’s head a moment ago.

“I’m sorry about breakfast,” she says. “I thought we’d handled these people last week.”

“Who are they, anyway?” says Steve.

Diana’s mouth twists into a little grimace. “Redditors,” she says, simply. “Very militant Redditors.”

“That’s the site, right?” says Steve. "The one with all the AMAs and the creepy stories?"  
“It also has a well-deserved reputation for showcasing the worst of the Internet,” says Diana. “These men feel that they have been ostracized by society, and they’re willing to go to extremes to take their revenge.” She shakes her head, gives a resigned, tired sigh that breaks Steve’s heart.

A hundred years ago she hadn’t known all of this. A hundred years ago she hadn’t known the darkness inside of every man and woman in Steve’s world. Steve can’t help but feel guilty, for taking her from paradise and introducing her to this world, in all its grimy, dirty, bloody patchwork glory.

He can’t apologize to her about this, though. He’s tried, already, and she’s shut him down every time.

Instead, he brushes his fingers over hers. “You won’t let them,” he says.

“Of course not,” she says, and the moment is gone, her voice ringing with conviction once more. “I have a plan—but I need to borrow your scarf. I left my tiara and armor at home, I only have my bracers and the lasso.”

Steve takes his scarf off. “Yeah, me too,” he says. “I have three knives, though.”

Diana’s eyebrow ticks up, as she ties the scarf around the lower half of her face.

“Four,” he amends, because if there’s one thing time as a brainwashed assassin has taught him, it’s that he has to carry at least three knives on him at all times. “But the bread knife doesn’t count,” he adds.

“We’ll have to pay for that one anyway,” says Diana, contemplatively. “And the plates.”

“I think the owner’d be willing to waive it just this once,” says Steve. He peeks out over the table. “There’s a guy in the front with a shitty Lex Luthor mask barking orders to the others. His gear’s better than theirs.”

“That would be the leader,” says Diana. “All right, so there’s six of them, counting him, and two of us. Right now, we’ve the element of surprise, so here’s the plan…”

–

Bruce calls two hours later and says, “Eventful morning?”

“Good morning to you too, Bruce,” says Diana, dryly. She and Steve have called off the breakfast date, because once you’ve had to fight off domestic terrorists on your breakfast date, there’s really no salvaging it, and instead they’re splitting a box of pastries on the rooftop, their feet dangling off the edge. “Yes, it was quite—interesting. How did you know?”

“You ended up on the news,” says Bruce, over the phone. “Mysterious Masked Lasso-Wielding Woman, huh?”

“I borrowed Steve’s scarf,” she says. “There wasn’t any time to get my armor on.”

“I figured,” says Bruce. “You doing okay? I’m running the records of the people you caught right now, and your hunch was right: they’re linked to that MRA gang we had to deal with last week.”

“What were they after?” she asks. “Do you have any idea?”

“None yet,” says Bruce, “but give me time. Meanwhile, I’ll get Alfred’s opinion. How’s Trevor?”

“These are really good,” says Steve, licking sugary glaze off his fingers when Diana glances at him. “Where did you find them? Maybe we can go there sometime.” He pauses. “Without, uh, bad guys trying to murder us, of course.”

“I’ll take you there later,” she promises. To Bruce, she says, “Steve and I are fine. A little bruised, and we’re having our breakfast late, but otherwise we’re fine.”

“Oh, good,” says Bruce. “Take care of yourselves.”

“You too,” says Diana. “Gotham would be in a great deal of trouble if its Bat passed out of hunger in an alleyway.”

“Fine, fine,” Bruce grumbles, good-naturedly, and clicks off.

“So,” says Steve, “Batman, huh?”

“He eats breakfast at 24-hour diners in the early morning while bruised and battered, and it’s early morning in Gotham,” says Diana. “I’m going to call Alfred.”

“Your friends,” says Steve, bemused, “are a little odd.”

“A little,” says Diana, holding back a laugh. They’re all a little odd, in the Justice League, in Diana’s own circle of friends outside of it. Even Steve himself qualifies, and judging from that slightly ironic smile, he knows it. “That’s one way of putting it.”

She reaches over to take a bagel, at the same time he does. Their fingers brush.

Diana turns to see him watching her, the way he does when he thinks she doesn’t see.

She’s seen him watching others, before, but always with a wary suspicion. This is different, though—purer, grounded in belief rather than suspicion, and for a moment the ghosts behind his eyes have disappeared.

She takes his hand. He leans in close. She closes the distance, their lips pressing against each other, gentle and tentative as so many of their kisses are these days.

So breakfast hasn’t been a complete disaster, after all.


	4. now we're torn, torn, torn apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Bruce finds her afterwards, in the manor, turning the mask over and over in her hands._
> 
> _“You’re going to look for him,” he says._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is from Of Monsters and Men's "Little Talks". for day 4 of the Wondertrev Drabblethon, "everything for you".

Bruce finds her afterwards, in the manor, turning the mask over and over in her hands. There is a celebration going inside the manor, Arthur having broken into the cellar, and Diana can hear Barry’s distant encouragements of “chug, chug, chug,” even out here.

“You’re going to look for him,” he says, without any preamble. Their friendship has gone on past that point, where they would need to greet each other pleasantly, before getting down to business.

Good. She isn't in the mood for pleasantries, right now.

“Yes,” she says.

Bruce sits down next to her.

“You can’t stop me,” she says.

“I know,” says Bruce.

She traces a thumb over the edges of the mask, this hateful muzzle. Thinks of Steve, smiling softly at her in the pale sunlight, eyes blue as the waters that surrounded Themyscira.

Blue as empty skies, when she saw them across the battlefield, above this hard black mask in her hands.

Could she have done something? Could she have saved him from this fate, had she done things differently?

“I had Alfred pull some files from Luthor’s personal files, after the battle,” says Bruce, snapping her out of her thoughts. “He kept a few off of LexCorp’s databases—I assume he wanted to still have some aces up his sleeve, just in case.”

The mask cracks, under Diana’s fingers.

“Hasn’t Luthor done enough?” she says. It’s a rhetorical question—they both know Luthor’s never going to be satisfied, ever. His is a hunger that knows no bounds, and Diana is so angry and so, so tired, her years weighing down on her shoulders. “He stole my photograph, first. And now this? How depraved can one man be?”

“He wasn’t the first,” says Bruce. It’s blunt, no dancing around the fact that Luthor had only been the latest to take advantage of a secret weapon.

The cracks in the mask grow ever wider.

“Right,” she says, the bitterness heavy on her tongue, like ashes from the battlefield, like snowfall in a cemetery. “I almost forgot.”

A hundred years of horrors and war and blood, and Ares had been dead for all of them. Mankind is, as one of her interns would so eloquently put it, a Hot Mess.

Bruce huffs out a breath. Then he pulls the files out of his bag—files in Russian, German, English, all of them with the stamp of one organization or another. LexCorp’s logo is on the latest one.

The mask shatters in her grip. The fragments fall to the water, sink under the surface.

–

The files are upsetting, to say the least. Long after the celebrations pass, she and Bruce stay up late, scouring through the files for any possible locations where Steve could’ve gone.

It’s while she’s translating the German file into English that he says, quiet, “He’s not going to be the same, you know.”

She wants to snap at him, tell him that of course not, of course he’d be different. She’s different too, no longer the naive princess who left her island to fight Ares, and if she’s changed over the course of a hundred years, how much more would Steve have?

But she reins in her tongue, and says, “I know.”

Bruce looks up from the footage he’s pulled. It’s of a 2005 assassination, and an airport camera had, by chance, caught sight of a bearded man in dark clothes walking past, hours before the death of a prominent politician.

 _Oh, Steve, what have they done to you?_ she wonders.

 _Can it be undone?_ she wonders.

She’s not sure.

“Even if you could bring him back, somehow,” says Bruce, “that’s still no guarantee he’ll be the man you knew in 1918. Or that he’ll even know you.”

Or that he ever will remember her.

It would hurt, she knows, if he still didn’t remember her even now. It did hurt, like a knife thrust into her stomach, when he snarled at her, _who the hell is Steve?_

But she has to.

“Maybe not,” she says, “but he deserves a chance to come in from the cold.”

“If he doesn’t want to?” says Bruce.

Diana breathes out. “Then,” she says, thinking of his watch in her drawer, frozen in time, “I’ll let him go. But I believe he deserves a chance.” She looks up at Bruce. “Don’t you?”

“He did try to kill you,” Bruce points out.

“You’re very paranoid,” Diana observes.

“You’re not paranoid enough,” Bruce shoots back.

“Because you’re paranoid enough for the both of us,” says Diana, fondly. “Maybe even all of us.”

Bruce huffs out a breath, turns back to the footage and cross-checks it against known safehouses in the territory.

Then he says, “Be careful, Diana.”

Diana looks down, and thinks of cold blue eyes, a cracked mask, a flash of recognition. What would she risk, to bring Steve in from the cold?

…a lot of things, she realizes. Perhaps even almost everything.

 _I always am_ , she could say. But that would be a lie, and she doesn’t deal in those often. She tries not to, in fact.

“I’ll try to be,” she says. “But I don’t make guarantees.”


End file.
